Act III
“Spin Light”
-1-
I don’t think it ever really sunk in that you were gone until I got back home. I could still smell you on my shirt, and I can’t even begin to tell you what that was like. They say you can’t blame yourself for things like this, but, I do. I blame myself everyday. I promised I’d never leave you, yet, that’s exactly what I did. I went back to your place and made sure that Sam got fed. Poor, old dog is probably going to miss you most of all. I saw your jacket, hanging off the back of the chair in the kitchen, and for some reason it reminded me how you were always cold. Even in the middle of July.
-2-
Dayton, Ohio
A short time after Impact ended...
Anj sat on the trainer’s table in a small room that was really just an alcove in the locker room. A young kid named Jett was going through the arduous process of unraveling all the tape on his wrists. Anj stared off, there seemed to be a collision of thoughts and sounds in his head. He thought about his conversation with Carver and what the man had been asking of him. Was it worth it though?
He headed back to his locker to gather his things. He had already checked out of his hotel and was eager to leave cold, rainy, Dayton, Ohio behind. As he was stepping out into the parking lot he heard someone calling his name and asking him to hold up. Anj turned and saw Steve Sayors desperately trying to jog over to him, and by the time he reached him, he had beads of sweat on his head.
“Damn, man,” Steve said when he caught his wind. “You’re a fast walker.”
“Why were you running? I stopped once you caught my attention.”
“You know, that’s a good question.”
“Listen,” Anj said. “I’m going to be late for my flight. What’s up?”
He made motion toward where his rental car was parked to give Steve a hint that he was in a rush.
“I wanted to catch you before you left. You were entered in the Lethal Lottery tournament.”
“What? I never signed up for that.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “Carver threw your name in the hat.”
Anj paused. He had specifically told Carver that he wanted out of the Lottery. That he wanted to prove himself in singles competition. What the hell was his angle?
“Did they already draw names?” Anj asked.
“Yeah, just a few minutes before you left. It was up on the TV in the locker room.”
“What’s the verdict?”
“It’s you, and John Christ, taking on Mark Flynn and Joseph Page.”
“Who the hell is John Christ?”
“Another newcomer,” Steve said. “Fights on Warfare. Look, I want to get your reaction now because this is gonna be huge once it hits the wire. Two of XWF’s best going against the newbies. The match practically books itself.”
“You want a reaction, huh?” Anj replied. “I think this is going to be a great match. Bottom line. We might even steal the show. It’s not every day you step into the ring with just one guy at the top of his game, but two of them. I hope they bring everything they got, cause I know I will be, with or without John Christ.”
“That is fantastic stuff,” Steve said as he frantically trying to jot everything down on a small notepad. “Let’s plan to meet up in Louisiana. I’ll schedule us some promo time.”
“I’m game as always,” Anj said as the two shook hands. “See you in the bayou.”
-3-
Hello, Memory Lover. Do you remember that time we first met on the train? It was October, right? And you had just broken it off with your old flame and I could tell you wanted to cry, but you were staying strong, because no one could ever seeing you looking weak, right baby? I remember we caught eyes across the aisle. I also remember my foot falling asleep, such a weird memory. But I didn’t want to move, couldn’t move with you sitting there. I would have ridden all night on that train with you. Heart to heart they say. Goodbye.
-4-
Lafayette, Louisiana
Early Sunday morning
November 25th
Sleeping on the plane had been useless. He couldn’t get comfortable in his seat, and the woman next to him seemed to find it necessary to keep getting up to use the bathroom. The plane landed in the early hours of the morning, and Anj decided since the hotel was close, he’d walk there to loosen some of the muscles in his body after being cramped up during the flight.
He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts he had mistakenly walked into the front lobby of the hotel. If he had been paying attention, he’d had seen the local press scouring the main foyer. One of the crew guys had mentioned to him that the XWF was pretty big in the south, and they even covered wrestling in their local sports section.
One of the reporters had spotted him coming through the door, and the next thing he knew fifteen more were surrounding him as he tried to make his way toward the elevator bank.
“Angelus...”
“Quote please?”
“...moment of your time?”
“How do you feel about tagging with John Christ?”
“Jesus saves, right?” Anj said with a smirk as he felt a tape recorder being shoved toward his face. “I haven’t heard any Harley’s revving up on my way here so I’m assuming he bailed when he saw the card.”
He heard a couple of the reporters laughing.
“What do you think about facing Mark Flynn and Joseph Page?” a woman with Buddy Holly style glasses asked him.
“I have all the respect in the world for those guys,” Anj said. “But at the end of the day you got a guy like Mark Flynn just trying to be another inmate running the asylum. He walks around like he’s a bad man, well I know a thing or two about taking out bad guys. Simple as that. Then you got his partner, Mr. Afternoon Delight, whose going to be in for a wake-up call himself and not because I got Jesus as my partner, but because I plan on showing why I am, the whole, damn show.”
He answered a few more questions as he finally got to the elevator bank and stepped into the open cart and pressed the number for his floor.
“Alright, guys. It’s been fun as usual, but it’s time for me to go.”
-5-
In the car, Beth said, “You saw it, right? He shot that girl.”
“No, I was trying to keep our heads down.”
“I think she’s dead.”
“Maybe.”
“He’s going to kill us next.”
Beth’s eyes the size of a diamond as she looked at you and then said, “I don’t want to die, Anj.”
She said your name. You loved hearing her say it. Sirens coming up the road now and you’re looking at her and thinking this isn’t funny, it isn’t, it’s fucking sad, that poor girl, and thinking, Okay, it’s sad, but God, Beth, I will never, ever live without you. I just can’t imagine it anymore. I want to ... What?
And the wind is pouring into the car, and the sirens are growing louder and there are several of them, an army of them, and Beth’s face is an inch from yours, her hair falling from behind her ear and whipping across her mouth, and she’s looking at you, she’s seeing you -- really seeing you; nobody’d ever done that; nobody tuned to you like a radio tower out on the edge of the unbroken fields of wheat, blinking red under a dark blue sky, and that night breeze lifting your bangs was her, for Christ’s sake, her, and she’s crying, her hair in her teeth, crying because of how mixed up everything had gotten. You’d said the first part in your head, the “I want to” part, but you say the second part aloud”
“Dissolve into you.”
And Beth says, “I know, baby. I know.” And her voice breaks around the words, breaks in the middle of her crying, and her fear, and her guilt. She takes your face into her hands as she pulls your attention away from the road.
-6-
Lafayette, Louisiana
Wednesday morning
November 28th
His phone was ringing again. He could hear it vibrating against the wood of the night table next to the bed in his hotel room. He let out a long groan, reached out, and knocked the phone to the floor where the vibrations were a little quieter. His phone had been ringing nonstop since Ohio where the news had broke about him being in the Lethal Lottery.
He stopped checking his email, and told the hotel to stop forwarding calls to his room. However, he had an obligation to fulfill here in the bayou, and though he’d never admit it, it had been … fun. The whole experience so far was surreal. He had literally gone from being a no name, just another guy on the House Show circuit, to having people cheer his name.
When he got back to his hotel after a morning jog, he had been surprised to find a group of fans of the XWF waiting for him in the hotel lobby. He signed autographs and took photos for a good hour and a half. It was a very odd thing to sit through and he felt like he had been watching it happen in someone else’s life.
He finally rose out of bed, relieved his bladder and hopped into the shower. He was already running late. A shuttle had been arranged to take him to the arena where the next live event was taking place and he had called and told the driver to wait for him down the road. The hotel manager had been kind enough to let him know that there were again fans waiting in the lobby.
Still not completely dry, Anj threw some clothes on, a jacket and his trusty Red Sox cap. He slung his bag around his shoulder, double checked the room, and made sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind and then he was on his way.
He took the stairs leading out to the back of the hotel two at a time and fiddled with unknotting the wires of the buds to his iPod. Once outside he was struck with the warm, damp air that was Lafayette. He had to be honest -- the place wasn’t exactly winning him over. The weather was gross, the food was all batter dipped, and even the local McDonald’s sold grits. The thought of food made his stomach grumble and he searched his bag for a power bar.
Anj started up the alley that was next to the hotel and pulled his cap down lower over his head as he passed the window that looked into the main lobby of the hotel. He didn’t like having to avoid the fans, hell, they were passionate about the product and came out in droves, and he had heard that the show in the Cajundome had sold out in minutes.
He found the shuttle down the road and boarded it with no fan fair. The trip was going to be long and he settled in to his seat. He turned up the volume on his iPod and put his feet up on the seat in front of him and thought about how unpredictable life was.
-7-
He didn’t remember falling asleep. That seemed to happen to him often, that his dreams would just swallow him whole out of nowhere. It was one of the dreams that he had often that made everything inside of him just … hurt. He wasn’t sure if he could even call it a dream, it really seemed to be a reverberation of a memory from long ago.
This dream in particular always started the same way. They were in her living room, the smell of fall coming in through an open window, and warm pasta in their stomachs and their faces red from the wine. Some song by Ben Folds Five was playing, her choice, not his. Anj sat on the couch and she was across the coffee table from him, sitting on the floor. They were playing some board game, but not really paying attention to it.
What he remembered was how green her eyes were and the way they held the light of the room and oh God … her laugh. The way her whole face lit up at his stupid jokes and sarcasm. He remembered he caught her cheating at the game, and when he caught her, she smiled slyly at him and he knew right then that he might not love another woman in his entire life except her.
There was a moth too. It had gotten caught in the light in the living room, it’s wings banging and burning as it tried to get free. He’d never forget watching her walk up the lamp, and cup that moth in her hand. She smiled at him and carried it away to the door. She opened the screen and set the moth outside. She sat back down and they smiled again and for the first time in his life, he knew the real him was shining through.
The second part of the dream was the hardest, because that’s where he had to lose her again. They were in her car, the gray Volvo with the broken brake light where she had backed into a lamppost one night in November.
Anj sat in the passenger seat and they were driving down the road and he could see the ocean on his left, and the afternoon sun was coming in through the windows. He had to shield his eyes to see her as the sun was blocking his vision.
When he did see her, she was smiling at him and singing along to a song on the radio. The rays of the sun would alternate between heavy and light, off and on, and each time she’d be in the seat, then she wouldn’t be. Every time he wanted to tell her how he felt, but when she would reappear, he forgot the words.
“Anj”
“Yes...?”
She was fading in and out again and he knew it was just a matter of time before she was gone.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Tell me what?”
He could see her face and she was the most beautiful girl in the whole world and he wanted to freeze this moment right here and never let it go.
“When we find our way back to light and when we come to find that we lost each other … don’t forget me, okay?”
“Don’t go yet.”
He felt her hand rest on his knee. She was almost a ghost now, almost completely transparent.
“I love you.”
“Beth...”
He heard his voice and it sounded like it was coming from a million miles away and he felt someone shoving him awake.
“I love you, too”
“That’s great pal, but time to go.”
He opened his eyes and was looking at a wiry man with shaggy red hair and a gap tooth grin. Anj sat up and had to take a moment to get his bearings. The wiry man was the driver of the shuttle.
“End of the line, enjoy your stay won’t ya?”
He could just nod as his tongue felt like paste on the roof of his mouth. He grabbed his bag and stepped off the shuttle, which was parked, right in front of the back entrance to the arena. He walked into the corridor and tried to find the locker room in the catacombs of the building.
Once there he found his assigned locker and began to unpack when he noticed a white envelope taped below the sign for his name. He opened it. The message was written on card stock in a sharpie pen and read:
“Angelus, I can’t stress enough that it might be in your best interest to do well on Saturday. I hope you’ve been thinking about what I said. Good luck in the Lottery. I’ll be paying very close attention. - Carver”
